Voters, in a First, Shut Down Nuclear Reactor

By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: June 8, 1989

Residents of Sacramento, Calif., voted Tuesday to shut down their utility's only nuclear power plant, the first time voters have decided to close a working reactor.

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the public agency that owns the Rancho Seco plant, promptly began shutting it down yesterday after the nuclear industry's $580,000 campaign to keep it open had failed to overcome arguments based less on the environment and safety than on economics: the troubled plant could not provide electricity at competitive cost.

The vote, by which the utility district's board had agreed to abide, was 53.4 percent to shut the plant and 46.6 percent to keep it open. That outcome was a setback for an already depressed industry that hopes for a rebirth springing from an increased demand for electrical power in much of the United States and growing concern over the environmental effects of the burning of fossil fuels.

The reactor, 25 miles from Sacramento, was built at a cost of $375 million. It has operated fitfully during its 15-year history, producing less than 40 percent of the electricity that would have resulted from unfailing year-round operation and requiring the utility district to double its rates over the last four years to pay for improvements.

Opponents of the plant, including two members of the district's five-member board, argued that despite $400 million in new investment in the last three years, it would be far cheaper to retire it now, halfway through its expected life span, and buy power from neighboring utilities in the California market, which is glutted with electricity.

Edward A. Smeloff, one of the board members who favored the shutdown, said the utility district was leaning toward ''1970's technology'' to replace the reactor: the installation of boilers fired by natural gas to drive Rancho Seco's existing steam turbines.

The fuel cost of using natural gas to generate electricity is about 2.3 cents a kilowatt-hour, Mr. Smeloff said, and for most hours of the day neighboring utilities will sell electricity to Sacramento at fuel cost plus 15 percent. Last year, by comparison, nuclear-generated power from Rancho Seco cost 5.4 cents a kilowatt-hour.

In addition to the Rancho Seco plant, the utility owns two geothermal plants, a small solar installation and a plant fired by fossil fuels. But now that Rancho Seco is closing down, the district will be buying more than half its power from neighboring utilities. Backdrop of Safety Concern

Although the vote Tuesday centered on economics, it took place against a backdrop of nationwide concern over the safety of nuclear power plants in general, and of local concern over particular problems at Rancho Seco. The reactor's design is nearly identical to that at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, where a severe core-melting accident occurred in March 1979, and Rancho Seco has had accidents of its own.

One of these occurred in March 1978, when a worker caused a partial blackout in the control room by dropping a light bulb behind a control panel. The result was to trigger emergency systems that dumped huge volumes of cold water into the hot reactor vessel, creating a danger of cracking.

To a greater extent, however, the vote was a popular repudiation of the conventional wisdom about nuclear plants: that they may be expensive to build but, once running, make electricity cheaply. In fact, utility industry statistics now show that the continuing expense of operation, maintenance and fuel is higher for reactors than for coal-fired plants.

Opponents of nuclear power, who have lost 14 similar referendums in 10 states during the last 13 years, took heart from the Sacramento outcome. ''This sends a message, a shot heard round the world,'' said Scott Denman, director of the Safe Energy Communication Council. ''This revitalizes and reinvigorates the whole consumer and rate-payer movement with regard to nuclear power.''

The vote was 111,867 in favor of the shutdown and 97,460 opposed, with about 40 percent of registered voters casting ballots. Atomic-power opponents said they had benefited from the fact that all those voting were neighbors of the plant and customers of the utility; in recent defeats for shutdown proposals in Maine and Massachusetts, some voters distant from the reactors were unaffected by the issue of cost. The Industry's Outlook

Advocates of atomic power have asserted that looming electricity shortages in the East and increased concern over coal burning's contribution to global warming offer an opportunity for new reactors.

But because of local opposition the industry is also fast approaching the abandonment of the Shoreham nuclear plant on Long Island. In addition, the Public Service Company of Colorado announced recently that it would abandon its Fort St. Vrain reactor, which, like Rancho Seco, ran poorly.

These developments, combined with Tuesday's vote, raise the possibility that the American nuclear power industry reached its high-water mark recently, at 112 operable reactors, when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave Seabrook, in New Hampshire, a license for low-power testing.

But at the Council for Energy Awareness, the industry's trade association, Scott Peters, a spokesman, said that while the Sacramento vote was unfortunate, ''we don't think this interrupts our progress.''

''It doesn't do anything for the supply problems we seem to be facing in many sections of the country, and it doesn't do anything for pollution,'' he said. ''It worsens pollution.''

The future of Rancho Seco itself is uncertain. The plant cannot be dismantled until a place is found for its spent fuel. The Department of Energy is studying a site in Nevada, at Yucca Mountain, which would be a repository for the highly radioactive wastes of all the nation's nuclear plants. But even the most optimistic projections are that no repository can be ready before the early years of the next century.